Vanished boy's aunt criticizes police probe

Although the Newark Police Department has recently renewed its activity in the case of five boys who were reported missing 18 years ago and never found, at least one of their relatives believes authorities missed their opportunity to solve the case and called some of their latest efforts “ridiculous.”

Helen Simmons, the aunt of one of the boys, Michael McDowell, said during an interview at her Newark home last week that the question of what happened to her nephew and his friends continues to haunt her. But she doubts the case will be solved now.

“What could they find now?” she asked. “There was no reason for those kids to run away. I knew a couple of weeks after they were missing that they had been killed. Five people disappearing at the same time all this time? Nothing else makes sense.” Yet, Simmons said, police continue to keep the case in their missing persons file.

On Aug. 20, 1978, McDowell, 16, of Main Street in East Orange, and Newark residents Alvin Turner, 16, of Clinton Avenue; Melvin Pittman, 17, of Beverly Street; Randy Johnson, 16, of Hawthorne Avenue; and Ernest Taylor, 17, of Lesley Street, vanished. They had spent the afternoon playing basketball and then had dinner at their respective homes before all going out again.

Police officially continue to classify the case as a missing persons incident since they say no bodies have been found to determine a homicide has been committed. They have pursued at least a dozen possible leads over the years, including checking for the boys among the bodies from the November 1978 Jonestown massacre and searching military records.

The latest activity in the investigation included a May police dig for their bodies in a small portion of an abandoned tick-infested field north of Newark International Airport to which Nutley psychic Dorothy Allison had led Please turn to Page 17.